Just another name on a grave
by Juste Cllia
Summary: Because all stories doesn't have a rough beginning and a happy end.


_I'm not a native speaker so there will probably be errors and misspelling but enjoy._

She is eleven, nearly twelve, when she receives the shining hit-ate that marks the first day of her life as a shinobi. She listens raptly to the speech of the academy-teacher that drone about their duty to the Leaf. And she is proud: she'll be anbu like her mother that died in the Third Great Shinobi War when she was just five, shinobi like her kin. She is as idiot as the next wide-eyed child that had enrolled to become a soldier and never seen blood before.

"I want to show you how cold the water can be and how burning the sun can becomes", answers her sensei when her teammate Choushi asks if they will be entered in the Chuunin exam held in Konoha three months after their graduation. They do not understand his answer. The no is evident: three months of only D-ranks, chakra control and refining of the academy teaching are not enough to make them chuunin level. But the exams are in Konoha and Hana who were in the same class as them had bragged about. Itachi who is younger than them and yet the beginning of a legend will enter too. Later, they think that the cold water was the January exam in Kiri and the July exam in Suna. Climate vainquish them both times. But looking backward, it probably had a deeper meaning.

Tears stubbornly held back, she can only _recognise_ the failure of their Ino-Shika-Chou trio as Kisan-sensei achieved to dig the grave for their teammate. Inoikoi stand silently at her side, shocked that Choushi and his too big heart had chosen to sacrifice himself to save his life. She slugs an arm around his shoulder. Choushi was the oldest of them. Three failures at the graduation exam, nearly thirteen when he passed, because the Kyuubi attacks had made him an orphan with two twin little sisters he had oftenly chosen over his studies. Inoikoi is the youngest, the silent and determinate genius that graduated early by two years and had become the "little brother" to be protected of their team. Sharigan activated, Kisan-sensei come next to them give his student a last homage: they were on an infiltration mission, too deep in enemy territory and without sealing scroll to bring a body back – a merchant family wouldn't have this item and the secrecy is necessary. Choushi would have a grave without a crux but he will not be forgotted.

"Kab?" She asks, surprised, when Kabuto Yakushi shows at training ground six for their morning practice. They were in the same class in academy before he graduated early and she losed contact. Inoikoi scowls at this intruder in their team but she smiles happily for the first time since Choushi death. Kabuto was her best friend at the academy: nearly all girls were Itachi's fangirls, nearly all the boys thought girls had cooties and only a few could keep up an intelligent conversation. Kabuto was neither of the first and assuredly the last, and she forsake the plan created with Inoikoi to make the would be Choushi-spot-stealer life hell.

"Ano, I failed the Chuunin exam last month and the others of my team got promoted", smile shyly and a bit stifly Kabuto, rubbing the back of his head. Inoikoi scowls harder while she beams.

Teams dynamics need to be worked anew with Kabuto's arrival. Inoikoi take months to accept him and Kabuto altern between being incapable to understand the most basics emotions and being surprisingly insightful. But soon enough, Kisan-sensei felt trusting enough to take new infiltrations missions: a speciality of his he is passing on his team, along with the genjutsu and ninjutsu skills. She became the new taijutsu expert of their team – for some reason Kabuto is abyssal at it and Inoikoi never had the build for – and happily let them the ninjutsu speciality. She does not have enough chakra for that anyway.

But she is a Nara and her clan is renowed for their analysis skills. She does not miss that for a medic, Kabuto forget (taijutsu) then remember (medical ninjutsu) then forget again (taijutsu) crucial anatomical particularities of the human body. Or that he can't throw a shuriken in practice but success this in the mist of an ambush in Tea country. And she knows that he knows that she knows and they silently agree to go blind in this case. She works around his oddness while planifying their missions – Kisan-sensei thinks Inoikoi and her are chuunin in all but the name and let them take initiative until the next chunin exam they will partake with.

They forgone the Suna's Chuunin exam. Two weeks before, Itachi had gone mad and killed his whole clan, Kisan-sensei included. During the confusion, their team was forgotten. Too many people still overlook Inoikoi for his age and she tried to be discret. She does not want to attract the attention of the non-anbu that were gouging the eyes of the dead's Uchiha out, she does not wish them to know she was her and only a quick genjutsu of Kabuto – his fault, he dragged her here in the middle of the night – had stopped the non-anbu from seeing them. It would not bold well for her if they were to find sensei's eyes in a conservation's scroll in her home. She wasn't going to let these strangers-maybe-murderers have them. She knows Kabuto will bring this secret in his grave as much as she is not going to comment about a few missing eyes he had taken.

Sensei is dead and hell begin when the one-eyed man – Shimura Danzo and she asks herself if there is a reason why Kabuto is trembling next to her – suggests to the Hokage they could mend the bridge with Iwa by sending a genin-team to their Chuunin exam. It's madness: since the Third Great Shinobi War neither Suna nor Konoha shinobi had partake a Chuunin exam in Iwa or Kumo, and reciprocly. It's a death sentence when the Hokage accepts then disinterest himself of them. Danzo orders three anbu – Anbu Nin, Anbu Gen and Anbu Tai are the warden of Hell and its main tormentors and she'll never know them under other names – to get them up-to-skill to spy on Iwa. She had never realized that sensei had protected them so much before three genin were send on A-rank missions. Kabuto keep them living and she knows it is not by multiples stroke of luck like he claims.

Iwa does not kill them: diplomacy has been efficient. Only the seven Iwa teams and five Kumo teams of genins try to during the second test. It takes them seven kills to survive the maze – an abandoned mine – where teams guts each others for scrolls to pass the test. They hid from the hostility in their hotel room for the rest of their stay. Kabuto broked his ankle and she does not begrudge his slow healing when she yielded her elimination-fight at the end of the second exam to avoid crippling injuries. Inoikoi is traumatized enough to take a leap of faith and prove himself worthy of a chuunin promotion.

Her uncle could not protect her in time from Danzo but he is aware, living, breathing, jounin commander of the Konoha'shinobi and he swept her in an apprenticeship before Shimura can further sinks his claws into her flesh. Kabuto finds likewise an apprenticeship in Konoha hospital. The Nara laziness, shogi-love and kinship save her from the psyched fate most shinobi suffer.

A year after she ditchs her next chance at the chuunin promotion for the sake of a gut feeling and rumors that say it is better to hid her bloodline from the Mizukage. A cousin of her that take part to the same exam doesn't and soon pandemonium broke along with the neutrality of the exam. Her new teammate Hyuuga Ko is slain along with Kaori-sensei and her cousin, a Kiri anbu try his hand at Kage-assassination and fails, and it take her two months to escape the Kiri anbus that chase her and Kabuto all the way from Water to Fire.

Mitarashi Anko is as mad as she seems and a former student of Orochimaru. She saw both in the Konoha Chuunin exam three months after her graduation. But while Mitarashi was promoted, Kisan-sensei didn't enter his team and used the opportunity to test their spying skills. The last member of their new team is Aburame Shisui and she know by his emotionless personality and Kabuto hostility that he's Danzo. Kumo Chuunin exam is finally her chance to avoid his grip and she does not mention Kabuto murder of the Aburame for the simple reason that Kabuto is a team-player and Aburame would have watched them die without an attempt to save them.

Chuunin life begin by a six-months gard duty on the Fire Country's border before she gets ropped in escorting the Daimyo in his annual journey through the country. She passes from the Daimyo escort to a minor lord but she convinced Sarutobi Asuma to come back to Konoha as was her mission. It was a fun trip but her speciality is infiltration and these missions are all but fun. She's glad she picked up medical ninjutsu under Kabuto guidance for the help mission ease the stress.

The next time she assists to a chuunin exam is to support her cousin Shikamaru and it end by an attack on the village. It's her first taste of war and four months after Kiri give them her second. They just ended the reconstruction, she just began to take outside missions after the months helping in the hospital and reporting all her interactions with and informations about Kabuto – her teammate, her life-savior, a traitor that hidded more than a seal on his tongue…

Then the missions flow through. An infiltration in Kiri, she's just a contact that passes the information but they are at war with Water. She evolves from fisher/smuggler-wife to nurse in Yuragakure. The former Hidden Village never totally disbanded and its shinobis side with Kiri. For three months she drove them to paranoia between sabotaging, assassinations and wisely induced suspicions in their ranks. When she returns to Kiri with her "husband" medic she knows it was a nickname-giving mission she had be good enough at to avoid entering the bingo books. A few months after she earns it when her covert is blown up and she must, again, flew Kiri.

Then its Oto she must infiltrate and if the first months are good enough she encounters Kabuto that will never be fooled by any of her disguise. But Kabuto is still her teammate – her sole remaining teammate since Inoikoi died in the Suna-Oto attack – and he claims her as a personal test-subject and never proceed to an actual experiment. Discussing the experiments he makes on others while he realizes them is better: even if she'll never admit to be interested by it, Kabuto knows she is. She wouldn't have implanted Kisan-sensei eye in her socket after she lost hers in battle – damn Kiri-nin – otherwise. A wrong calculation considering she always compensated small chakra reserve by pinpoint control: the drain of the eye without the bandage he was hidden under is enough to stop her from using any jutsu, least she risks chakra exhaustion. Naturally, Kabuto is interested by the process. Sadly, Orochimaru too.

They understand at the same moment the meaning of another missed period and only one person dares to come in Kabuto's lab. After shared freaking out – Kabuto can be empathic sometimes – he defers to the responsible of her newfound situation.

"At the death of the Iron Emperor Kinfusa, he had seven sons ans five daughters by four different wifes" she begins the story of Hideki the Negociator, one of the most famous Emperor of Iron that in his youth was only known for his laziness and would later sire a bastard child who was the first Nara. His eyes half closed and an hand resting on her growing womb, Orochimaru listens why the name of their child should begin by Shika. She doesn't even know if he will let her lives an hour after the birth and she does not intend to stay to discover that. She was Akamichi Choushi teammate for two years and a half and since she had implanted her Sharigan she had seen his sisters work their clan jutsu. Kisan-sensei eye had made her chakra reserve grows and she can now use a few jutsus. They never catch her when she escapes, when she hid in a small town in Fire Country to give birth, or when her kin pick up the son she hadn't told the Council about.

But nothing explains why she can now turn Kisan-sensei eye off and activated the Sharigan in her other eye. The only person she could speak about it is Hatake Kakashi and she doesn't know him enough to discuss the eye she is not supposed to have with him. Kabuto probably knows but her medical knowledge is limited to field-chirurgy and survival. Her best guess is that her father wasn't only some anbu comrade or target of her mother but an Uchiha and that Kisan-sensei eye activated a dormant bloodline.

But neither her eyes nor her clan justus can stop the grey-eyed multiplied man that attacks Konoha in search of their Jinchuriki. She's out of shape, retraining her body and the trail of destruction through the Nara compound prove she isn't enough. Her eyes burn when she sees the wreckage that was the house she lived in with her months-old son.

War comes like an evidence. She'd been a shinobi for more than ten years and she knows the world she lives in. And she knows through trespassing in the Uchiha compound that the eyes she had unlocked aren't just a mangekyou but an eternal one as well, meaning that Kisan-sensei was most probably her father like he used to claim during infiltrations missions.

The Uchiha bastard that annihiled his own clan seems too to think that she looks the part, for that he follows her glowing eyes through the battlefield. She catchs him in her shadow at the cost of a Tsukuyomi and her fellows shinobis manage some good throws. She's stronger than that: a Tsukuyomi isn't going to end her.

Dying in a war would have had a meaning but from injuries to lack of medic-nin she became to precious to be send in the frontline and the war is soon over. She refuses to teach her first team of genins but an undercover mission convinces her to accept the second, regardless of their lack of skill and coordination. Midori is bratty, Kazuo lazy and Mariko ropes her teammate in doing her binding through well-calculated tears. She'll probably keep them a long time and they're far from ready for B-ranks and above. She doesn't know if she wants to strangle them, worries for Mariko – she's too natural at it to not join the seduction business – or joins Kazuo in cloud-watching. He's half-Nara, she's sure of it.

But it's shinobi world and even Rokudaime Hokage Uzumaki can't stop war. S-rank bastard in front of her is some minor kage and very much out of her league but he fried Kazuo and she wonts let him have Midori too. These chuunin are still her genin. He didn't anticipate that she's playing double-bluff and she's really aiming for both of them to take a four hundred-foot dive that is enough to kill even shinobi specialized in Raiton jutsus. She uses Kamui at the last moment but she never learned how to do it and she isn't sure she has enough chakra for it.

_Originally I planned to kill her at the end, but then ideas of time-travel invaded my mind and while I'll probably not write them, I choose to let the end open._


End file.
